UK businesses: No one cares about cyber attacks!

UK businesses are calling for a national police cyber crime unit as a growing number of companies fall victim to e-crime.

More than three quarters (74 per cent) of the nearly 4,000 organisations that responded to The Invisible Crime: A Business Crime Survey survey by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), called for a dedicated police e-crime unit.

silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK cyber crime police unit.

The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from police forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting e-crime.

We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.

Cyber crime targeting businesses is on the rise - while there were no reports of phishing emails in a 2004 BCC survey, the 2008 report found 31 per cent had fallen foul of phishing and 23 per cent had machines infected by spyware.

A higher proportion of small companies (those with less than 50 staff) and employees working from home are falling victim to phishing and spyware attacks than larger companies.

Virus-related equipment failure or data loss affected 19 per cent of businesses surveyed, credit card fraud affected 11 per cent, theft of PC/laptop eight per cent, hacking seven per cent and four per cent or less were affected by unauthorised disclosure/loss or theft of company data.

The majority of those businesses surveyed used antivirus and spam filtering software, backed up data and used a firewall, while only 40 per cent had a strong password policy and only 15 per cent employed an IT manager responsible for security.

More than two thirds (68 per cent) of respondents to the BCC survey said UK police are not dealing with issues important to businesses.

Gareth Elliott, BCC policy adviser, said: "Cyber crime is a growing problem for business and there are some new issues and threats arising, that is a real worry. Businesses are not at all confident that police understand the issues affecting them and do not feel that the police are dealing with them. The worrying thing is that three in 10 businesses now do not even report a crime."

Elliott said the BCC will be raising the issue of cyber crime policing with the Home Secretary and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

The Home Office has still not agreed to provide the £1.3m in start up funding for a Policing Central E-Crime Unit (PCEU), proposed by Acpo and the Metropolitan Police.